Wildfires in Greece Kill At Least 49

Hundreds of firefighters were battling the blazes as people left their homes.. “Instinctively, seeing the end nearing, they embraced”, Nikos Economopoulos, head of Greece’s Red Cross, told Skai TV.

Wildfires burning near Athens have killed 49 people and injured more than 100, causing Greece to declare a state of emergency and evacuate towns in the southern peninsula of Attica.

Firefighters carry a dead person following a wildfire at the village of Mati, near Athens, on July 24, 2018. In addition, 164 adults and 23 children were still being treated in hospitals for injuries, mainly burns.

“We were driving along the road going into smoke, then all-of-a-sudden the flames were at the side of the auto”, he said, adding: “All the houses on the hill beside the highway were completely burnt out”.

In Finland’s northernmost Lapland province – which calls itself the “official home” of Santa Claus – fires have ravaged woods and grassland close to the border with Russian Federation.

Mati is in the Rafina region that is a popular area for local tourists, mainly the elderly and children at holiday camps.

In all, the death toll stood at 50 by Tuesday morning, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said.

Çavuşoğlu said firefighting airplanes, helicopters ready to fly Greece if needed. Several bodies were recovered and more than 700 people were taken to the port of Rafina.

“What’s most important now is your life”, he said.

This year is among Greece’s hottest on record, if not the hottest overall, according to satellite analysis by NOAA. Boats plucked another 19 people alive from the water. Reuters reports the fire that hit Mati had slowed as of Tuesday, with winds that had been as high as 50mph losing that strength.

Meanwhile, emergency services reported being inundated with calls about missing people.

Wildfires in Greece have claimed the lives of at least 60 people, in what the country’s interior minister, Panos Skourletis, described to Sky News as a “biblical disaster with human losses”.

The strong smell of charred buildings and trees lingered in the air in parts of Mati on Tuesday, where white smoke rose from smouldering fires.

Tspiras said “it’s a hard night for Greece”, and said more than 600 firefighters and 300 vehicles were involved in trying to put out the fires.

A firefighting helicopter flies over an avenue during a forest fire in Neo Voutsa, a northeast suburb of Athens, Greece, July 23, 2018.

Driven by winds of up to 65 miles per hour and temperatures of 104 degrees, the forest fires are being called a “national tragedy” and deemed by Interior Minister Panos Skourletis a “biblical disaster”.

“Our thoughts go to Greece and the victims of the bad fires”. Sweden has also suffered forest fires.

There were fears the death toll would rise significantly.

Greece, he added, had requested drones from the USA to “detect any suspicious activity”.

By dawn Tuesday, fires were still burning around the capital, while others broke out elsewhere during the night.

A newly-married Irish couple have been caught up in wildfires that have been sweeping Greece.

In the late afternoon, a large fire had also broken out north and east of Athens.

A hillside of homes was gutted by flames east of Athens.

Authorities deployed more than 200 firefighters and 60 engines from across Greece to deal with the massive blaze at Kineta, a small resort town about 54 km (35 miles) west of Athens on a route tens of thousands of drivers use daily to reach the Peloponnese. With a cloud of black and orange smoke having descended across the city, transport services have been disrupted, the main Athens to Corinth motorway shut and train services cancelled.